


Wandering Thoughts to Lead You Home

by GrapieBee



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Found Family, Lance ends up high but that really wasn’t what he wanted I promise, On Hiatus, Suicide Attempt, Team as Family, and the fallout and healing that has to come after, be warned this deals with both sides of a suicide attempt, puking, quite a bit of puking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 18:33:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15646518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrapieBee/pseuds/GrapieBee
Summary: Something’s wrong with Lance.





	Wandering Thoughts to Lead You Home

**Author's Note:**

> Please take the tags seriously on this work. Take care of yourself. And please, if you’re feeling like death is you’re only option, please please please reach out to someone.
> 
> A lot of what this story contains is both from first hand experience or close family experience. I’m writing this, in some regards, to help unpack some of my own baggage so, take what’s written here with a grain of salt, ok?
> 
> Also if anyone is interested, you can find the link here ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR_TBKIrZ2GaSDjrTkyVbVyx0NG83nygL ) for a playlist of music I listened to while writing this.

Pidge yawned, reflexively raising the back of her hand to cover her mouth, her sock covered feet making a soft noise along the floor beneath her. Her eyes stung slightly as tears gathered in each corner from the yawn, a hot scratchiness creeping behind her eyelids that only came with late night work.

There was only so much one’s body could do to fight weariness and, truth be told, Pidge had already pushed well past her natural limit over an hour ago. But this project, an upgrade to her cloaking on Green that _should_ make it possible to cloak another craft within a certain perimeter of her own lion, was too important to sleep on. Not when she had, at best, only half hour or so of work left in front of her.

Outside of running actual tests that was, but that was just semantics at this point anyways.

Her eyes, however, had been disagreeing with her for longer than she would have liked. When she had startled herself awake, the weight of her head suddenly pulling her forward too fast from where she had fallen asleep sitting up, Pidge knew just what such a thing called for.

A snack. With maybe a water or one of those food-goo-fruit smoothies that Hunk had whipped up the day before.

This was how Pidge found herself, awake and wandering to the kitchen at approximately 2am, the soft _swish swish swish_ sound of her socked feet against the floor her only companion.

That was, until another noise caught her ear.

Had she been anymore focused on her destination, she would have missed the sound of retching coming from the door just to her left. She paused, mid-step, outside what she knew to be Lance’s room.

As the seconds tick pass and she heard nothing, Pidge started to wonder if her self-imposed sleep deprivation had really, truly started getting to her. Just as she’s about to move on, she hears it again, clear as day now that she knew she was waiting for it, the terrible sound of someone dry heaving.

She pivoted easily, taking the few strides needed to put her in front of Lance’s door, knuckles rapping firmly against it without hesitation.

“Lance?” She called, only just loud enough for her voice to penetrate into the room. It felt like her voice boomed in the empty hallway anyway.

A few seconds passed, completely in silence.

She knocked again.

Silence still reigned supreme.

“Lance, I’m coming in.” She called out, more of a statement than a question.

Still she paused, giving him one more chance to answer her, to give her a chance to not invade his privacy. When no such thing happened, she pressed her hand against the door lock, taking a step into the room as the door opened with a soft and airy _woosh._

The sudden smell of sweat, bile, and something vaguely medicinal hit her the moment the door opened.

The blankets on the bed were crumpled and haphazardly hung off the bed, like the occupant hand been tangled in them before rolling from the mattress. Like the shortest trail of breadcrumbs Pidge had ever seen, just beyond where the blankets had pooled at the bedside, there lay the shirt from Lance’s PJ set.

A full step into the room and Pidge could tell the front of the shirt was soaked through with something that looked far too much like partially digested food goo for her liking.

The smallest, tiniest bubble of concern floated up to her throat at the sight.

Hunk had asked her, just a few hours ago, if she had thought Lance seemed off.

At the time, she had shrugged, her thoughts quick to run over the last few weeks.

Lance had been normal, in her opinion. Well, strike that statement, he had been more _Lancey_ than ever before, even compared to their time as a three person team on Earth. The jokes and the witty one liners as of late came from him in rapid fire succession like never before.

Always when they were needed. A handful of times when they weren’t.

It hadn’t been something she thought worth mentioning, it was just Lance being Lance.

But Hunk had that gut intuition, that natural instinct of knowing when things weren’t quite as they should be. Especially when it came to his friends.

He knew _just_ when to send her a quick message to her holopad to remind her to eat or drink. The message itself always seemed to come a moment or two before her stomach growled angrily. It was uncanny, really.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that he could tell, in his own way, that Lance was getting sick.

Now the question to figure out was why in the world Lance hadn’t said anything about it in the first place. If he’d been feeling under the weather, there shouldn’t be a reason for him _not_ to make mention of it. Not that she saw anyways.

Her nose reflexively scrunched against the smell that has permeated the room, pulling her face into an expression of disgust as she stepped even further into the room. She was not surprised to find the door to the small bathroom was opened. The soft light from inside streamed through the doorway, the sound on someone trying to clear their throat following it.

Pidge followed that sound and quietly peeked her head into the bathroom. Just as she thought she would find, there was Lance, shirtless and seated on the floor, attention directed to a holopad in his lap. The elbow he had pressed against the lip of the toilet seemed to be the only thing keeping him upright, his hand trembling slightly as he pushed sweat damp bangs away from his forehead.

The longer she stared at him, the more Pidge saw that something was just...not right.

It was the way he muttered to himself, his voice too low for her to pick anything out.

It was the fact that he was so engrossed with the holopad in his lap that he didn’t seem to have heard her enter at all.

It was in the way his hands shook as he tapped at the screen, how he blinked his eyes hard every few seconds, like it was growing more and more difficult by the moment for him to focus.

It was all these things that had her feeling more and more uneasy by the second.

“Lance?” She said his name softly, fully stepping into the bathroom as she did so.

His reaction was immediate.

As lost as he may have been in his own thoughts and whatever it was that had his attention on the holopad, his shoulders still tensed and his head swung around to look at her.

Pidge, for the life of her, didn’t know how to read the expression she found on his face. Not fully at least.

There was confusion. There was pain. There was exhaustion. There was something else entirely that she just couldn’t place.

It’s a moment longer before he blinks his eyes hard, like she watched him do towards the holopad. Like he couldn’t fully see her.

“Pidge?” His voice came out rough and her name sounded slightly slurred on his tongue.

She swallows, that bubble of worry growing, pressing in on her ribs uncomfortably.

“Yeah Lance, it’s me. Didn’t you hear me kno-“

Her question is left unfinished as Lance’s body tensed fully, his expression pulled into a grimace as he turns just in time to heave into the toilet, his datapad slipping from his lap and clattering to the floor as he shifted. This time he brings up something wet to splash against the bottom of the bowl and the sound twists something in her own guts.

He was sick. Lance was so, _so_ sick.

He’d been fine just a few hours ago, had eaten readily at dinner, had been joking and laughing, right as rain. How had he gotten this sick this fast?

Her hands clenched into fists on their own accord, the deep and steadying breath she pulled into her lungs calming her fraying nerves.

Now was not the time to be asking questions: Lance was sick and needed help. As much as she wished she could get him up and to the infirmary by herself, she knew there was no way that was happening. Not without help.

“Lance, I’m gonna go get Shiro. We need to get you checked to see what’s got you sick.” She said definitively, ready to turn away from the bathroom entirely.

“Don’t.” Lance said as he turned his head to look at her again, wiping at the corner of his mouth with the heel of his hand as he coughed softly.

When she looks at him, holds his eyes with her own for more than a moment, she can see how dizzyingly huge his pupils look. She can see that they are watery and bloodshot, tears clinging stubbornly to his dark lashes. She took in the blood vessels popped under his eyes, like little bursts of lightning radiating along his lower eyelids, trailing downwards and sideways to skirt the apples of his cheeks.

She takes in his expression, tries to decipher the _something_ else to it that she doesn’t know how to read and has to wonder: Why wouldn’t he want her to get him help?

The confusion must have shown on her own face, because a beat later Lance shifts slightly, pulling the holopad back into his lap as he answers her unspoken question.

“ ‘m fine, it’s just a stomach bug. Or maybe it was something I ate. P-point is, I’m sure I’ll be fine in the mornin’.There’s no reason to wake Shiro up. I’ll be ‘ine.” His words come out quickly. Too quickly.

Like he had taken strips of nonchalance and tried to paper mache them into an ill fitting mask.

Like he was trying to hide something from her.

“Lance, dude, we all ate the same thing tonight. And if it _is_ a stomach bug, we need to check and make sure it isn’t anything contagious.” She’s pragmatic, unwavering, ready to argue further if need be. Ready to break that mask open like a hornets nest masquerading as a piñata.

But Lance had already turned his attention back to the holopad in his lap, his head swaying slightly each time he had to blink, his fingers slowly tapping away at the screen.

“Lance?”

When he doesn’t respond, when his attention doesn’t so much as flicker towards her and the soft muttering under his breath begins anew, the worry that’s been growing in her chest reared its ugly head fully. She immediately turned from the bathroom and is soon jogging down the hall to Shiro’s room.

Something was wrong with Lance.

He was sick, trying to insist that he didn’t need a helping hand and trying to hide what had made him sick to begin with.

Something was very, _very_ wrong with Lance. But it was ok.

It would be ok. She would get Shiro and maybe Coran and everything would be ok.  Everything would be just fine.

It had to be.

**————**

Lance blinked, the edges of the text on his holopad wiggling and squirming in a way he knew letters weren’t supposed to. Like, not ever, not even in a “space is weird sometimes” sort of way.

He had messed up.

Royaley and thoroughly, he had fucked this up somehow. Just like when he was thirteen, except this time it was so, _so_ much worse.

The last time he had tried to kill himself, at least that had only been aspirin. Something that his body threw up, that had him sick to his stomach for a day and once it was done it was done.

Not like this. Not like this where, true, he was unimaginably nauseous and, yeah, it felt like he’d emptied his stomach another seven times since Pidge had been there. But the aspirin hadn’t been 10,000 years old. It hadn’t been the equivalent of an alien sleep aid that had, apparently, developed hallucinogenic properties over the years it had sat in storage.

This wasn’t how this was suppose to go, not at all. He figured he’d done enough research, had gleaned enough information about the medication stored on the ship from Coran to know which would be useful for a relatively painless death.

But, nah, that had been too much to hope for.

He’d managed to down four of the small, deep blue bottles Coran had shown him about two weeks ago _/Only need a drop or two and this will have you sleeping like an infant in just a tick!/._

He had managed to drift off for about an hour, at most, before he had been so rudely awoken by a painful twist in his stomach.

It had been all he could do to sit up in time as his body had heaved, bringing up his dinner and a wave of that same liquid he’d downed, diluted to a soft blue from the water he’d used as a chaser. It tasted just as bitter coming back up as it had going down.

He can remember falling to the ground as he tried to scramble to the bathroom, his legs a tangled mess in the blankets. He knows he pulled his top off, hating the way the soft material cling to his chest, wet and warm and smelling disgusting.

The last thing he knows he did, without a doubt, was that he’d had the mind to grab his holopad on his way to the bathroom. That he’d been doing his damndest to turn the timers off on the notes he’d written everyone in between being sick.

Because, god, if this was _just_ going to make him sick for a day or two, if he was going to end up ok at the end of this, there was no way in hell he was going to let anyone find out what he’d been trying to do. He’d get rid of the evidence, find a way to lick his wounds in private, and try again later.

Maybe next time he could use the airlock.

He’d been so close to doing that this time, but a part of him had wanted to leave a body behind that wasn’t _too_ damaged. Didn’t want to leave a bloodied mess. Didn’t want to leave behind the task of having his body fished from space or cut down from a rafter somewhere for his team.

His family had always been big on burying their dead so, he figured he could at least let them have that.

He blinked, hard, rolling his eyes around in their sockets angrily, trying to keep his focus for more than a few seconds at a time. God, if he’d known that the sleep aid might have a side effects like this, his innards feeling like they were on fire and turning his mind into a dazed mess, he would have just gone with the airlock.

He blinked again, gritting his teeth in frustration as the holopad in his hand seemed to teeter and sway, the letters and numbers vibrating in time with the steadily growing tremor between his ears.

“Ok Lance, just, let’s delete the...the things. God, what things Lance, what th- right! The time. The timer things. Get that done. Focus. Come on, you got this.” He muttered to himself, afraid that if he didn’t say the words out loud that he would lose his train of thought entirely.

Again. Like for the twentieth time since he’d woken up.

Determined, he focused back at the pad in his hand, tapping through the screen for a moment, trying to navigate his way to the timer settings he had programmed into the device earlier that morning.

There were six such timers set up, each attached to their own digital letter, ready to be sent in unison at 4am castle time. He’d figured that two things would have happened by that point:

1) He would be dead or too near to it to be saved.

2) That even the night owls in the group, especially Pidge, would be well and truly asleep.

What he had not planned on was this mess he found himself trying to clean up while his body was progressively reacting more and more to the expired medicine he’d taken.

The letters themselves he had started writing well over a month prior, when he had first come to the conclusion that he was ready to die.

Hunk’s had come first in the group. Had been the most heavily edited and revisited over the weeks since its first draft. He wanted to make sure the last words he would leave his best friend were _just_ right.

Then came Shiro’s, which had the selfish request that, if possible, they return his body to Earth for his family to bury. You know, if they found the time.

Then Allura’s, filled with apologies for ever making her feel uncomfortable in her own home, thanking her for being so strong in the face of a task like guiding Voltron to victory.

Then Keith’s, filled with regret that he had never tried to get to know the other while still on Earth. Trying to put into words how he’d had this idea built in his head that Keith was this unreachable thing, too good for anyone else, only to realize over time that life doesn’t work like that. That no one is what they seem at a first or even second or third glance.

Then Coran’s, something simple and to the point, words of thanks for sharing his world’s history with him. For listening when he felt homesick too.

Pidge’s has come last and with good reason. She was young, the youngest in the group and he had no way of knowing how she would handle something like this. For all they knew, she had already lost her family to the Galra empire (even though she insisted there was no way that had happened, Lance had a feeling that this war would be cruel to her personally). He didn’t want to be another reason for her to stay up late at night, burying herself in her work so she wouldn’t have to _feel._ Her’s took the longest to write and had been finished only hours ago.

He just had to turn the timer off on Pidge’s note and everything would be ok.

Lance was almost done, he knew. He was on the right page, he thought, all he had left today do was to tap the screen and confirm that he wanted this stupid timer to be turned off-

It was then that another roll of nausea hit him, giving him just a split second to pull his head over the lip of the toilet, heaving dryly, bringing nothing up. His eyes watered, his jaw ached, and his throat throbbed, raw and ragged.

He started into the water below, snot and spit dripping into the bowl, sending out ripples from where they struck. He watched, enrapt, as the water shimmered and shook and moved in a way he knew it shouldn’t.

But it was pretty. It was nice.

Lance watched the water, the boiling pain in his guts forgotten for the moment.

From where it had slid from his lap as he had shifted, Lance’s holopad lay on the cool floor, it’s screen still showing the timer as set and ready to send its letter.

A moment or so later, it’s screen went dark, locked and waiting for someone to turn it on once more.

By the time it had flickered off, Lance had completely forgotten that he had brought the device in to the bathroom with him at all.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: Spoiledspine


End file.
